Dad trusts Black & Decker like it was made by God. Mom thinks Macintosh is de rigueur. Sis won’t even look at jeans that don’t say Guess? and her brother is hooked on Nintendo. Eighty-seven cereals on the grocery shelves fail to woo grandma from her Quaker Oats. And you? Bet you’ve got your must-have brands, from aspirin to automobiles. You’d have to be comatose to grow up in America and not acquire some fierce, possibly irrational faith in a brand name. The result of such loyalty? The top 20 brands in the U.S., according to Financial World magazine, are worth a total of $200 billion.
A discerning consumer like yourself probably believes the products you favor are truly superior, and maybe they are. Nonetheless, some people are paid good money to make sure you know it. What you may not know is that some of those people are in Burlington, Vermont. And they’re not nefarious capitalist brainwashers; they’re artists. Really good artists who just happen to be focused on certain products and the marketing paraphernalia that helps sell them.
Jager DiPaola Kemp Design isn’t exactly a household name, but in design, advertising and marketing circles it comes close. In the last five years, JDK has emerged as one of the biggest — from a half-dozen to 55 employees — and hippest design houses in the country. The acronym represents husband-and-wife designers Michael Jager and Giovanna Di Paola, and business partner David Kemp — the “left brain” of JDK. These three, originally from St. Albans, Montreal and New York, respectively, are principals in the company with a reputation for workaholism, cutting-edge graphics and visionary, holistic development of products — most visible in Vermont are probably Burton Snowboards and Magic Hat. JDK also has an enviable grasp of the ever-changing youth market that is both intuitive — the average age in-house is 28 — and extensively researched.
The JDK Design mission — “to be highly effective in the use of design as a strategic brandbuilding tool” — sounds pretty straightforward. But that’s before you read its Manifesto for the Future of Design, entitled “The Consciousness of Chaos.” This document spells out JDK’s belief system with a constellation of signs-of-the-times like “Thinking is fluid, fast-changing, reflective of the light-speed evolution of technology.” Under a section about the role of the designer in this fast-paced world, the manifesto warns, “Those who do not respect the process and the symbiotic web of creative viewpoints are doomed to extinction in the new reality of design.” Whew.
It’s no surprise that many of JDK’s clients are companies willing to go out on the edge — and have an active, youthful customer base. Converse. Merrell. Karhu. Champion. Specialized Bicycles. Burton, a Vermont manufacturer of snowboards and related apparel, hooked up with JDK six years ago when both companies were young. Their hand-in-hand growth since then perfectly illustrates the brand-building philosophy Jager espouses — and the preferred long-term, all-encompassing relationship with a client. “Burton was definitely the turning point for us,” Jager acknowledges.
Jager also appreciates that Burton is willing, like boarders on the slopes, to take risks. All its catalogs sell dare-devil attitude — usually with smart, sassy graphics and outstanding action photography from mountaintops. But an appropriation from Madonna’s Sex book several years ago pushed the envelope. In the erotic passage, words referring to a certain anatomical spot are crossed out and replaced with snowboarding-related words. “I like my board,” it begins. “My Burton is the temple of learning,” it concludes.
Not all JDK’s clients cater to the short-attention-span MTV generation, though. There’s Canon, Isotoner, Major League Baseball, Burlington’s White Crow Software and Problem Knowledge Couplers — a computerized symptom analysis program for medical paraprofessionals. JDK has also done work for hoary old Sylvania, IBM and GE. And every year, there’s at least one pro bono piece for a local nonprofit, such as the ’94-’95 brochure for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.
While JDK’s uber-design has fetched them international recognition and heaps of awards, it has also stirred up a predictable degree of professional jealousy. After sweeping the Pegasus Awards — the Oscars of Burlington’s advertising world — for years, JDK declined to enter this fall. Though no one will ‘fess up to it on the record, the scuttlebutt at the awards dinner was that JDK had finally come to consider themselves above the fray of local competition.
Kemp counters that the company didn’t enter for essentially two reasons: the prohibitive cost of all JDK’s designers entering work and dinner tickets for 55, and the company’s preoccupation with a move from Kilburn to Maple Street. Instead, the entire gang had a celebratory pot-luck dinner in the kitchen of their new quarters. Jager’s exasperation at being “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” is well-founded: One local ad agency owner shared a rumor that it was “an anti-Pegasus dinner.”
“I feel fine about not going to Pegasus,” says David Covell, a JDK senior design director and Jager’s cousin. “It used to be very exciting … having those accolades. But we just decided it was time to move on.” The 30-year-old designer regrets that the younger people at JDK haven’t experienced their share of Pegasus praises. But, he adds, “if there’s any kind of image of us being snobs, it’s perpetuated from without, not within. Because we’re so busy, people might think we’re aloof, but in reality we’re just working our butts off.”
Michael Jager is adamant that JDK isn’t just “the David, Gio and Michael show,” and a tour of JDK headquarters shows that’s true. Several years ago the company formed six design teams — with monosyllabic names like “Thrum,” “Sauce” and “Horse” — because, explains Covell, the work load made it impossible for everyone to know everything about all the clients. In addition to the designers, JDK now has 10 account managers. It takes three people just to manage systems in the 70-computer firm. The storage computers have a room of their own, watched over by Advanced Technology Director Christopher Thompson, who’s also in charge of JDK’s Web page — a collaborative art project in the making.
A dozen years ago perhaps only Michael Jager sensed that “distinctive, high-caliber work could come out of Vermont,” but few on the outside would have put their money on Burlington as an internationally recognized design headquarters. Nonetheless, JDK has become a place where young designers and interns want to work, and seem honored for the opportunity. Though the company emphasizes — and thrives on — teamwork, Jager and Di Paola’s talent and single-minded dedication clearly set the tone.
“I’ve worked with some world-class designers,” says Magic Hat co-owner Alan Newman, “and JDK is as good or better than most. What makes them great is that they approach every project, every design problem, with a level of creativity that I’ve never seen before. Everything that comes out of there is fresh.”
Newman recalls the pleasure of working with Covell to create the distinctive look of Magic Hat. “We were probably in their face more than a lot of clients,” he says. “We were looking for something with mystery that celebrated the alchemy of brewing.” He adds that the fledgling micro-brewery didn’t want a look that was too slick, nor too Vermont. They went to the right place. The swirly logo and quirky typeface with moon and star is earthy and funky-sophisticated, and its tap handles are literally works of art. The look has done a lot to set Magic Hat apart from its competition, but, in truth, the design says less about the brew than about the people behind it. At JDK, that’s not unusual.
“We do design that’s distinctive to the client,” says Jager. “We don’t do trendy shit — that’s pointless. A lot of design studios foolishly fall into that trap.” Once JDK establishes a “core identity” for a client, he explains, JDK helps build the brand name by using that identity throughout — “from point-of-purchase to Web sites” and even, in the case of Burton, to the architectural and interior design of its showrooms. “We’ve got a talent for getting into a brand we work with,” says Jager. “You really merge on an intellectual level with what that brand is all about.”
Jager keeps his hand in a lot of projects, according to Covell, and is often the first one to do the research with a new client. “Michael is the most driven person I’ve ever met, period,” says Burlington designer Bill Harvey. “He’s completely dedicated to making great design.”
But Harvey is quick to also praise Di Paola, who worked for him in the early ’80s. “Gio’s brilliance has nothing to do with software,” he says. Paul Kaza, a South Burlington ad agency owner who employed both Jager and Di Paola for two years, concurs. “A lot of people don’t realize the role she’s played in setting the design tone there,” he says, “She’s an extremely talented designer.”
Right now Di Paola is worried, probably needlessly, that she’ll lose her touch while taking time off to be with four-and-a-half-year-old Eli and seven-month-old Mia. “Michael had a dream this morning,” she says wistfully, “that I went back to the office and I was thrilled that I had all this work to do.”
With the purchase and renovation this fall of a hulking brick building at 47 Maple Street, JDK finally has a space worthy of its size and eminence. Built in 1915, its last owner was Independent Foods, which essentially used the building for storage. There is some irony in a building on the historic register, cleared of dusty piles of equipment, being transformed into a design studio that sets the pace for newness. The building’s exterior, though, is untouched, and will stay that way. “People ask us when we’re going to move in,” says Di Paola with a laugh. Her husband calls the building “a really big found object.”
Its ground floor holds a 2000-square-foot gift to the public: a SoHo-style art gallery with the name of Exquisite Corpse. The moniker refers to the Surrealist parlor game in which individuals pass a piece of paper around the room, adding words one at a time until it grows into a synchronous “poem” with an oblique energy and meaning all its own. “I’ve always been fascinated with that concept of putting together like artistic minds,” says Jager.
When the Exquisite Corpse Gallery officially opens on December 9, it will feature Spencer Tunick, the New York photographer infamous for his quirky nudes-in-public shoots that have kept him one step ahead of the police and on the hit list of moral censors. Like much of Jager Di Paola Kemp design, it is sure to raise a few eyebrows.
“The gallery is our way of giving back to the community,” Jager continues. “It will allow us to bring local work together that deserves recognition, and to bring in work from people we meet in our travels.” Jager believes the gallery will parallel, in its own way, the creative work — and philosophy — upstairs.
Most of the bustle happens on the third floor, which has been shaped into niches for the six design teams and administrative offices. And on a long, curving interior wall, Jager spontaneously painted — with a rag on a stick — an iconic head from which arrows zoom off in two directions. It symbolizes the idea, he says, that “not taking action is bullshit, that you get ideas out of your head and make things happen. You have to be proactive.” A symbol, in other words, for Jager DiPaola Kemp.
This article appears in November 29 • 1995.
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